By Sharon Eberson
Tricia Paoluccio has had Dolly Parton’s voice twanging around in her head for as long as she can remember. And now she’s letting her inner Dolly out for all to hear – with Parton’s blessing – in Here You Come Again: How Dolly Saved My Life in 12 Easy Songs, a new musical presented by Pittsburgh CLO at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.
Playing her hero fulfills a dream for Paoluccio, whose stage roles include Chava in the 2004 Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. Her collaborators in the new musical are her husband, director/choreographer/co-author Gabriel Barre (director of CLO’s 2022 Godspell) and Emmy-winning writer Bruce Vilanch.
“I loved Dolly Parton my whole life,” explains Paoluccio, during a Zoom interview that included Barre and Vilanch. “When I was a little girl, I heard her sing Here You Come Again, and I said, ‘I need to memorize this song.’ ’’
in Here You Come Again, presented by Pittsburgh CLO. (Matt Urban)
This was in the pre-Google days, before the lyrics to every song were at our fingertips. Her father’s coworker gave her a typed sheet of the words, and she memorized her first Dolly tune.
“I did not know you weren’t supposed to copy her vocally,” Paoluccio added. “So I learned how to make my vocal chords basically just do every vibrato and scratch and crackle, and my whole life, I’ve been able to do it.”
Until last year, her uncanny Dolly vocals were more or less for friends and family only, but “I always dreamt that I could create a show where I could play her and embody her.”
Parton herself was so impressed with the concept for the musical and her vocal doppelganger, she gave her permission not only for her songs to be used in the musical, but for Paoluccio – and so far, only Paoluccio – to play her. Parton has the right of approval for anyone who will play her in the show.
The actress shares the stage with Jamison Stern as brokenhearted Kevin, who is wallowing in a bad breakup while sheltering with his parents during the pandemic. His mood takes a swing for the better when he is visited by the vision of Dolly Parton – Paoluccio – who comforts Kevin and sings some of her best-known songs, as well as a few obscure ones, too.
Most of the show’s songs are by Parton, but the few she is closely associated with but did not write include the title song, by the Grammy-winning team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and Barry Gibbs’ Islands in the Stream.
“Tricia has an encyclopedic knowledge of Dolly material, and she would come up with songs I’d never heard of that Dolly wrote 35 years ago that she’s been singing all of her life,” marveled Vilanch.
“I put in a request for my top 25,” Paoluccio said with a smile.
In Here You Come Again, the songs are not used as in most other jukebox musicals. For example, Mamma Mia!, with a story built around ABBA’s music, or the biographical Jersey Boys. Here, the songs are meant to be Dolly herself singing, as part of Kevin’s healing process.
“For my whole life, I wanted to do something like this, and I always thought the best way to tell a story about a person is to not make it about the person, but to have it be about somebody else and show Dolly in action,” Paoluccio says. “So I wanted to create a show about a fantasy friendship between an uber fan and Dolly Parton …. You learn little tidbits about her, but it’s not about her. It’s really about the effect she has on another person. So that was my general idea that I’ve literally had for decades.”
After the Delaware Theatre Company premiered Here You Come Again in September of last year, Gail Obenreder, a critic for the Broad Street Review, described it as “a charming two-hander … filled with Parton positivity, homespun advice, thwarted romance and music galore.”
Here You Come Again has arrived at a time when Dolly Parton is on a hot streak, even for her. The beloved Backwoods Barbie, creator of the worldwide Imagination Library, philanthropist extraordinaire who gave $1 million to COVID vaccine research, was recently awarded a $100 million by Jeff Bezos to give to the charity of her choice. The newly minted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer ditched the rhinestones in favor of leather and put her stamp on the genre with a recording titled Rock Star. She also helped us say goodbye to 2022 – and set the Internet abuzz – singing a mashup duet of Wrecking Ball and I Will Always Love You with goddaughter Miley Cyrus.
And then there’s the Dolly Parton Baking Collection, via Duncan Hines …
Vilanch said it’s all in the musical mix coming to Pittsburgh.
“When I saw the cake mix, well, we can’t ignore that,” Vilanch says with a chuckle. “The woman who’s, you know, curing COVID, and she’s got a cake mix? Where does that happen? But, I mean, she’s amazing,”
Vilanch won his Emmys as a writer for the 63rd and 64th telecasts of the Academy Awards. He first worked with Parton 40 years ago on what he called “a disastrous TV special.”
“I was part of the rescue squad that was brought in, and we became friendly then,” Vilanch recalls. “So, I’ve written for her off and on through the years.”
The show was created without knowing if Parton would grant the rights to her songs, and with the assumption that in her “vast entertainment network,” as Vilanch put, were out there pitching musicals meant to use the same catalog.
They were surprised to learn that Parton, who wrote the songs for the Broadway musical 9 to 5, had not been approached about a show using her recordings.
In fact, the only note she gave to Vilanch was to take out a joke about her hometown, Sevierville, Tennessee, because, as she put it, “Bruce, I have to go back there sometime!”
The pandemic plays a part in the show because it was a big part of its creation. In March of 2020, “we were isolating in a little log cabin in the middle of nowhere in California,” says Paoluccio, when her husband got an email.
The artistic director at Florida Studio Theater in Sarasota, where Barre had worked previously, said he had PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) Grants to distribute for new small-cast musicals, and did Barre have anything he wanted to pitch?
In fact, he did. “Gabe has been hearing me talk about this for decades,” his wife said.
“Before I submitted the idea,” Barre says, “I thought, you know, that Tricia and I would want to have a hand in the writing, but we’d want a skilled comic and a genius writer, and I had a wonderful experience working with Bruce on another project.”
When Vilanch said yes and the PPP Grant came through, all during the pandemic shutdown, it seemed like a natural way to build the story they wanted to tell.
“The pandemic as a backdrop was really exciting and obviously made it very relevant,” Barre says.”So the character of Kevin is, in May of 2020 when the show takes place, quarantining in the attic of his childhood home in Longview, Texas.”
In Pittsburgh, a two-hander such as Here You Come Again would usually be seen in the Greer Cabaret, which currently is undergoing renovations. For this production, CLO has moved across Downtown to the Highmark Theatre, the versatile, mid-sized auditorium within the Pittsburgh Playhouse, with seating in an “L”-shaped configuration for this production.
The show has played in much larger venues, but Pittsburgh will get an up-close look at Tricia Paoluccio’s dream-come-true musical.
“There is a purity and a positivity to the show, and that came from the the structure that we came up with together – but largely, from Bruce’s wonderful writing,” Barre says.
Vilanch, the actor, has performed his one-man show Bruce Vilanch, Almost Famous, and also has written for some of the biggest names in showbiz, on the Tonys, Grammys and Emmys, and as a head writer for the Oscars.
He found the idea “delightful” that Parton would be depicted as a fantasy character, but also, as the beloved superstar she is in real life.
“She’s a great mixture of a kind of sly, winking understanding and sincere spirituality and uplift,” he says, then, unable to pass on the joke, adds, with apropos gestures, “In every way, uplift.”
It’s the kind of joke we hear the self-deprecating Parton telling about herself, perhaps from Vilanch’s pen. Despite their longtime association, he says he was surprised that Parton found time to read their script “between curing cancer and staging a moon landing.”
No doubt, Parton’s newsworthy accomplishments at age 76 are like free publicity for Here You Come Again as it heads into Pittsburgh.
If you see someone particularly gleeful hanging around the Playhouse, it might very well be the woman who finally gets to portray the beloved Backwoods Barbie onstage.
“I mean, honest to God, the biggest dream of my life has come true,” says Tricia Paoluccio for the third or fourth time. “I’m the happiest actor I think you’re ever going to meet.
That’s partly because she gets to play her idol, but also because of the message she gets to deliver.
“Ultimately, I really believe in the seriousness of the message, which is that, whatever life throws at you, it’s going to be OK,” Paoluccio says. “You know, we have this wonderful line: Let go of yourself, get over yourself and take the ride. That’s really the message of our show, and that’s a very deep message,”
It’s a message that has the endorsement of Dolly Parton.
Presented by Pittsburgh CLO Kara Cabaret Series and produced in association with Point Park University’s Pittsburgh Playhouse, “Here You Come Again” is at the Highmark Theatre, Pittsburgh Playhouse, Downtown, January 12-29. The show runs 2 hours, with a 15-minute intermission. Tickets and details: https://www.pittsburghclo.org/shows/here-you-come-again
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